


unconditionally

by PlacentaMilk



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 07:33:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28347693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlacentaMilk/pseuds/PlacentaMilk
Summary: He doesn't grin at her, at least as far as she can see, but he shrugs and sits back in his chair. "For?""Looking for me even though I never asked for it.""You never had to."
Relationships: Robert Joseph MacCready/Female Sole Survivor, Robert Joseph MacCready/Sole Survivor, robert joseph maccready/
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	unconditionally

MacCready didn't like it last time he was down in Quincy, and he doesn't like it now, but f- damn it if he was going to give up. Dogmeat is confident in every step he takes, leading the two of them further and further south, weaving in-between raider-filled buildings and mirelurk infested beaches. All things considered, the two of them make it just fine, but just fine is still pretty shaky when you're running through raider territory.

There's a cabin, secluded from the rest of Quincy, out near the water. It looks pretty dead but Dogmeat suddenly breaks into a sprint towards it, bounding across the sand.

Mac sighs and readies his gun, following after the dog.

It's been two months, give or take, since she up and left them. It was right after they blew up the Institute. He remembers standing on that rooftop with her, he remembers everyone cheering when that large mushroom cloud blossomed in the sky, but his eyes were on her. It would be an overstatement if he said she'd been as happy as the people around her. If anything, she looked grim that day.

He still kicks himself for it. They had a party afterward and by morning, Nora was gone. Maybe he should've known, or he should've kept watch. Watch on her at least, but he did none of those things. None of them did. Not really. 

Dogmeat pushes the front door open with his snout and disappears, the door swinging slowly closed behind the dog. Mac prepares for the worst. Out here in raider territory without so much as a trapped door? She's either dead, or simply not there.

His boots click heavily on the rotten porch boards, and when he pushes the door open, it's to find Dogmeat sitting over a prone body, whining. MacCready's heart plummets into his stomach and promptly out his a- butt. He steps forward to hover, to see if this body is actually Nora, to see if Nora is actually dead.

Her skin is pale, and she's skinnier than the last time he saw her, but that's definitely Nora. He stands still for a moment, waiting to hear her breathe, waiting to see her chest rise. Dogmeat leans down to lick her face, more impatient than MacCready is willing to be. Her eyes snap open and she jerks back, but once she realizes it's just Dogmeat, she visibly relaxes. "Hey boy," she murmurs, a hand coming up to stroke his fur.

MacCready sighs, and she goes still again. He watches her go through her mental gymnastics, jumping through hoops to determine that the person hovering behind her is actually safe, and not someone she needs to treat as a threat. "So this is where you've been?" He asks before he gives her a stroke, stepping back and looking more closely at the room. Mold. Dust. Sand. Scorched walls and broken windows.

Nora sits up, and when the gravity of the world is pulling down on her face like that, he realizes just how _skinny_ she's gotten. And it's not like she was never _not_ skinny, she'd always been more on the thinner side, but now her cheekbones are cliffs on her face and she looks... well. She looks like a skeleton, to put it frank. "Out of all the people to find me, I didn't think it'd be you."

He doesn't know what to think of that comment. Doesn't know if he should take it as a compliment or insult or neither. "This is a long way from home. It's going to be a rough walk back."

She finally looks up at him now, her brown eyes that used to look like honey and warmth now empty and lifeless. "I wasn't planning on coming back."

The weight loss. The lack of security. Nora might as well have painted a big red neon bullseye on her back and strutted straight into raider territory, shouting _'I'm right here!'_

MacCready doesn't let her have it though, not that easily. "Set up a second Sanctuary all the way back here then? I dunno boss, sounds pretty risky to me with the raiders nearby," he says, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall.

"You've always been a smart ass."

He'd grin if he had it in him. "So, what was the plan? Just waste away out here? Hope a raider comes and shoots you? Maybe a Mirelurk coming to rip your limbs off?"

This time Nora looks down at Dogmeat, who's laying down with his head in her lap, and shrugs. "Whichever came first."

And, not for the first time, MacCready doesn't entirely know what to say. Or where to start. The boss is... well, she's always been a fighter. Tooth and nail, she'd kick and claw and bite until you were dead or worse. Ever since she first stepped down the Third Rail to save his sorry a-butt from his dwindling supply of caps, he's seen a strong woman with a flame that burns brighter than the sun. He's seen her lie, he's seen her rage, and he's seen her in every light except this one. This... quietly broken one.

"What happened to you?"

It's a simple question that she has a hard time answering.

"...Mac, do you remember the entire reason I went after the Institute in the first place?"

He nods without thought. He remembers that first day clear as a bell, no matter how long ago it was. He remembers thinking she was fuc- crazy for wanting to go marching into the glowing sea, never mind taking down the Institute. "Your kid, right?" he asks just to make sure.

"Well, yeah... I never actually thought he was alive though. I wanted to believe it, and that's what I kept telling myself, but I knew that he was gone. Men like Kellogg don't take a baby with less than nefarious intentions."

Nefarious. Again, he'd laugh if he had it in him.

"But we got your kid. He's practically the star of-"

"That's a synth, Mac." Nora says it quietly, like she doesn't want him to know. Or maybe like she doesn't want to admit it. She avoids his questioning eyes, choosing instead to bury her hands into Dogmeat's fur and focus on petting him.

MacCready's lack of answer must be answer enough because she's continuing with, "I kept telling myself I could do it, you know? Putting one foot in front of the other for no other reason than I had to do it. If Shaun was dead, I'd kill whoever murdered my family. And if he was alive?" Nora scoffs, bringing up a hand as if to ask 'so?'

"I'd rescue him, and make the people who took him pay. I'd kill anyone who got in my way, and I'd... I'd make sure Shaun was safe. I could do it. If he was dead or alive, I'd make those fuckers pay... But you wanna know the real funny thing, Mac?"

This time she does look at him, looks him straight in the eyes and holds his gaze. "There was no one I could make suffer. Suffer for everything I've gone through. Everything and everyone I've lost. It hasn't been eight or ten years since they took him from the goddamn vault, it's been sixty... He _was_ the Institute, MacCready. And I killed him because I promised everyone I would, and he-" she chokes this time, her throat full of too many emotions. "He wasn't even my son."

MacCready stays silent, giving her space and time to say everything that's been swirling through her head for the past two months. "I got handed this weird nightmare hybrid between the two possibilities of Shaun being alive or dead. Shaun was alive but he wasn't my son... and I think the worst part of it is that I don't even regret it. I don't regret killing him. He was a monster."

Speaking as someone who has been riding on the heels of this woman for the past year or so, it's a lot to take in, especially all at once. The Shaun back in Sanctuary is a synth, and the real one was the leader of the Institute. He sits on it for a moment, chews thoroughly and swallows her words. "And then you just came out here to die?" He asks, because there's nothing else he can say. He could ask about synth Shaun, he could ask about Institute Shaun, but none of it would be right.

Nora shrugs again, her hands leaving Dogmeat's rough fur to press her knuckles into her wet eyes. "Everyone I knew and loved is gone. My family, my friends, my husband and my son... I was never meant to be here. I don't know how to survive here."

"That's bullsh- crap and you know it," MacCready frowns, calling her out on it. Maybe she wasn't the best, maybe she still had to learn stuff, but she definitely knows how to _survive_. "How long has it been since you stepped out of that vault? Huh? A year? A year and a half?" He asks. "I've been in this wasteland since I was born and you've saved my butt more times than I can count. You're the one who drew the Minutemen back together and built a foundation they can stand on, you're the one kicking raiders out of the Commonwealth left and right, you're the one who blew up the Institute for christ sake. No one but you would've been able to find the Institute, what took you a year to do would've taken everyone else thousands!"

He knows he's angry for the wrong reasons, and he knows that directing it at her when he's not mad at her, and when she doesn't deserve it, is a sh-crappy move, but what the hell? "No one else could've done the things you did, and even if they could, they wouldn't have."

"That's not true-"

"People don't know how to do the shit you do!" MacCready argues back, letting the curse slip and immediately wanting to punch himself in the face for it. Dammit. "Nobody looks at people getting torn apart by raiders or deathclaws or super mutants and thinks that they'll save them, people look the other way because it's none of their business! I don't know how you can do it, just fling yourself at any danger around even if that danger isn't directed at you. You've gotten bit by ghouls, you've gotten clawed by deathclaws, you've nearly gotten your head smashed in by supermutants and it was for what? What was all of it for?"

Nora is back to looking down at the dog, but she says "Don't forget... I killed God's immortal children."

MacCready groans, the anger easing off of his shoulders as he closes his eyes to fight against the smile trying to creep onto his face. "And you killed God's immortal children. I'll never forget that goddam-dang story."

When he looks back down at her, the corners of her lips are upturned. Not quite a smile, not all there, but it's the start of one. "I think you just did." She points out, eyebrows raising.

"Har har. Get your skinny butt up." MacCready turns away from her to take off his backpack and set it down on the barren wooden table seated in front of the window by the door.

Nora stands up like he tells her to and regards him for a moment. He's more weary than the last time she saw him. More tightly-drawn. More holes in his already-tattered coat, burn marks, places nicked by knives. She wonders if he spent every day looking for her since she left, but then looks away from his silhouette and out at the beach through the window. _Stupid questions get stupid answers, Nora,_ her mom used to tell her.

MacCready pulls out cans of food, she sees beans and corn and a can or two of tomatoes. She knows he expects her to eat so she walks forward and plucks up a can of the corn. "Want to share a can instead?"

His eyes narrow at her but he accepts, probably knows that's the most he's going to get out of her today anyway, and goes to sit down in the chair pushed up against the wall. "That one's-!" Nora begins to say, hands reaching out to stop him, but he's already sitting down on it and plummeting to the ground. Dogmeat barks at him, like he's laughing.

"Broken."

"You let me sit there on purpose," he accuses, accepting her hand when she offers it to pull him up. Nora just laughs and says, "I tried to warn you."

MacCready takes the other chair which leaves her standing, something she doesn't care to do for too long. So after Mac gets the can opener out from his backpack, she's all-but shoving it onto the floor and leaning her weight against the table. She doesn't trust the table further than she can throw it. "How long were you out there?" she eventually asks, watching MacCready open up the can of corn for the both of them and then one of the beans for Dogmeat. Dog's gotta eat too.

"We've all been out there since you left." MacCready gives easily, giving her one of his dented metal spoons.

"We?"

"You didn't think it was just me, did you?"

Nora shoves a spoonful of bland, watery corn into her mouth instead of answering. It's all the answer MacCready needs.

"We have everyone looking. I know Preston stayed behind in Sanctuary to help get word out to passing traders and settlements... Hancock and Deacon went southwest. Danse went up north with some of his paladin buddies. Piper stayed in Diamond City just in case, but I think Nick went to... what was it called... Far harbor or something like that?"

Nora nods and looks down at her feet silently.

"Point is, everybody's been on the lookout. It wasn't until I ran into one of those Atom Cats that I knew I was going in the right direction."

She barely recalls it now, heading into their base for supplies. She had helped them with a small minor problem months back. They remembered her and let her nab some food for the rest of her caps.

"I'm pretty shitty, aren't I?" Nora mumbles. It wasn't like she didn't think of all of her friends, of all the people that looked up to her for some unknown reason. She thought about them constantly. There was never a time she _didn't_ think about them.

"I don't think so." MacCready says, taking the can out of her hands easily. Not like she was eating much of it anyway. "I mean- okay, yeah. What you did was pretty shitty," he says freely, which makes her give him a look, "but you've never been a shitty person."

She leans over and gives him a flick on the nose. 

"Hey!"

"Didn't you say you were trying to become a better person? Quit the swearing." She scolds, taking the can of corn back and digging her spoon in. Mac smiles to himself, like he'd done something good. She'll _give him_ something to smile about, alright.

Nora sighs quietly, more of a quick inhale than anything. She feels... well. She feels light. Like all the weight on her shoulders has been lightened some. It's still there, but it isn't heavy. Her back doesn't bow under the pressure now.

She side eyes him for a moment, Mac who's currently helping Dogmeat get the rest of the beans out of the can. She doesn't look fully, doesn't really allow herself to, but she sees the sunlight coming in through the dirty window and finds him pretty. Despite the tiredness that sits in the circles of his eyes she finds him pretty. Handsome.

Sometimes - maybe now especially, when she isn't really looking - sometimes Mac looks like Nate. The silhouette of broad shoulders and tiny waist. The outline of his green, eight-point military cap. The shaven nape, the light stubble when he hasn't shaved in a while. The bump on the bridge of his nose.

But then she looks closer, or MacCready moves or laughs and the spell is broken. His hair is a light brown instead of dark black. When he smiles, a dimple pops out on his left cheek. His nose is slim and pointed, and his eyes are a light crystalline blue instead of a dark chocolate brown. MacCready isn't, and never will be Nate. He's blunt and a smartass. He speaks things on his mind, and hates it when she gets quiet. His jokes are mostly immature and...

Nora loves him anyway. Quietly.

"Thank you, Mac..." she trails off. Above it all, whether he could replace the Nate shaped hole in her heart or not, whether or not she'd ever be able to be what Lucy was to him, whether she died today or in forty years- he's always cared about her. Caps or not. 

Unconditionally. 

He doesn't grin at her, at least as far as she can see, but he shrugs and sits back in his chair. "For?"

"Looking for me even though I never asked for it."

"You never had to."


End file.
